


Angsty Harry/Draco ficlets & drabbles

by Lokifan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-20 17:41:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 24
Words: 6,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11925933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokifan/pseuds/Lokifan
Summary: All my angst Harry/Draco ficlets & drabbles, written for various challenges.





	1. After The End

**Author's Note:**

> #1 was written for the challenge "empty" at dracoharry100.

Draco didn’t scream when it happened; he stood quietly, then gave a little sigh into the Dementor’s mouth. Harry screamed, pain ripping through him as Draco dropped into a heap on the stone floor.

Kingsley offered Harry a job: they needed Aurors. Harry shook off the paternal hand on his shoulder, skin crawling.

Harry’d promised Draco, before the trial. “I’ll take care of you.” His influence hadn’t been enough to save him. But he could brush his hair and wash him and make sure Draco was warm and fed.

Draco wasn’t in pain. He watched with empty eyes while Harry cried.


	2. I Had Him

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for dracoharry100's challenge, "lose".

You can’t lose what you never had. That’s what Harry said when he told me he was marrying her. He said he wasn’t leaving me, because we’d never been together: not really, not in the light of the world. He kept repeating the words, finding new ways to say I had no claim on him; I had no right to look at him the way I did, my face screwed up and my throat raw with the sobs I was choking back.

He didn’t mean to be cruel. He was trying to ease his own pain, his sense of infidelity.

~*~

At the time, of course, I was too angry (desperate, hurt, desolate) to see that. I shouted at him to get out in a voice that didn’t sound like mine and he stumbled to the Floo. I kept screaming for him to go for long minutes after he’d gone.

Today I saw him with his fiancée. I stood still for a moment, caught, and his hungry eyes flickered to mine. He looked at me when she was talking to him, when I was pretending not to care.

Harry was right: it’s not possible for me to lose him. Not really.


	3. Green

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for hd100's challenge, "grave".

Green was always his favourite colour: the poison-green of the house crest, or the jade of furious Gryffindor eyes. Even after everything changed, everything he’d known about himself falling apart and reshaping like pieces of a kaleidoscope, that remained constant. Green was his favourite: it was aroused emerald eyes, or the woolly jumper, with a grey D, that symbolised acceptance.

Draco ran his fingers through the stems of the lilies on the grave, and sighed.

Now the colour could never mean anything to him but the sight of his Harry’s fearful eyes, the moment before the curse’s green light hit.


	4. Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for hd100's challenge, "secret".

He wakes up, and turns to see Harry lying beside him, every morning.

They smile at each other and kiss; Draco laughingly complains of morning breath, and they check if they have time for sex. They do, limbs entangled and mouths close.

It’s bliss.

Then Draco leaves for work. His colleagues snicker together; his boss sneers, though Draco knows he’s doing well; he goes and sits in the cubicle he still hasn’t been promoted out of, and reads Rita Skeeter’s latest bile. Moral degenerates who should be allowed no influence...

Draco secretly wonders if he should have stayed with Astoria.


	5. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Weren’t you supposed to hate someone _less_ after you had sex with them?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for a Last Drabble Writer Standing competition, for the prompt "I hate that I want you".

Weren’t you supposed to hate someone _less_ after you had sex with them?

Draco spent the anniversary of Voldemort’s defeat getting quietly pissed with Goyle at the Leaky Cauldron. They stared at the pitted table instead of mentioning Crabbe while Goyle inhaled Guinness. Draco drank whiskey that burnt his throat so that for a moment he couldn’t breathe.

Potter was the man of the hour: laughing, drinking Bitterbeer too fast, thumping Longbottom’s back.

They met in the men’s room. They shuffled around each other, carefully silent, until Draco caught Potter’s eyes in the mirror. They were bleak and miserable: an emerald-green wasteland.

“Potter – ”

Potter lunged. Draco cried out, reaching for his wand, but Potter seized his wrist and squeezed hard before planting his lips on his. The clatter of his wand on the tiles meant nothing: Potter’s hot tongue was moving slickly in Draco’s mouth, Draco’s hand was clutching his hip.

They Apparated to Draco’s bedroom without a word. Potter slid to his knees, his mouth hot and fervent and fucking unbelievable. Draco’s eyes rolled back at the sight of Potter’s cheek distended round his cock; he came shamefully fast. Potter fucked him then, and Draco’s breath came in sobbing pants as he begged.

Potter was gone come morning. Draco saw him at lunchtime. He looked tired, but essentially the same: bristling with vibrancy, hair a ridiculous supernova of black, laughing too loudly.

Draco waited for the private look that said they shared a secret.

It never came. Potter’s gaze hitched for a moment like a fingernail caught in cloth, then slid past.

Draco looked at the women his mother lined up and was sickened. He couldn’t be without Potter. Potter hadn’t spoken to him since.

Draco hated him. Would never forgive this desperation.

Potter didn’t seem to notice.


	6. Permanent Failure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco hated the scars at first. They’re a permanent mark of failure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for the sortinghat drabs prompt "scars – we all have them."

Scars – we all have them. Every member of my almost-lost generation carries their own marks of the war.

I hated mine at first: white lines across my chest and neck, interrupting my flesh. I already felt cripplingly vulnerable, crumbling under the weight of my responsibility and the knowledge of my helplessness. To be half-killed while I cried – the shame burnt in my stomach afterwards, while the curse wounds slowly knit.

I hated Potter even more that year: he was Quidditch captain and I couldn’t eat from fear. But he’d disappeared into the mental mist that now surrounded everything outside my narrow, hideous situation. I thought of Mother and Father and the Dark Lord and Dumbledore and Snape, with an occasional thought for Vince and Greg. That claustrophobic terror didn’t allow for school rivals. But I couldn’t even beat _him_ ; Snape had to save me.

For the next eighteen months those scars were proof of my failures.

It started to change after Potter was captured and escaped. The Dark Lord descended on us like a black storm. A dozen spells hit me; the light had barely faded from one before his high voice was calling the next. They hurt and attacked and burnt.

Limp in bed that night, after Mother had sneaked in to heal me, I worked my fingers carefully over new skin, learning the marks I was left with. Nothing was as deep – as effective – as Potter’s curse, and over the years they faded. Only a few remnants were left by the time Harry and I got together at Terry’s twenty-first.

He stumbled against me in the hall of Terry’s flat, and I stumbled into the wall. Harry followed. The kiss was sloppy and drunken and involved too much tongue, but I was kissing _Potter_ and that was too bizarre and brilliant for me to stop.

He shuddered at the sight of the scars when he pulled my shirt off, and lowered his head to press damp kisses along the raised lines. He was wincing and apologetic at the very sight of them.

Nine months of fantastic sex, Quidditch matches, joking and hexing and learning far more about him than I ever realised there was to know. By the end, he’d stroke my chest and trace the scars when we lay in bed with an expression far from that wincing guilt.

Then Ginny Weasley came back from the continent.

Harry wanted the white picket fence with roses round the door, the vivacious wife, the three children and a crup. I was a fling while he was young, not the start of a new life: the call of cosy Weasleyness was too strong. He didn’t understand I would have been constant too, that there were other ways to inextricable bonds than childhood comfort.

He should have done, after all that’s been between us.

I wear the scars proudly now: Harry’s mark on me, and the only lasting thing he ever gave me.


	7. Wish You Were Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is an awesome, if difficult meme I picked up somewhere – not sure where! You put your iPod/Spotify/whatever on shuffle, and pick a pairing. You write a ficlet (or whatever) based on the song that comes up, and you only have as long as the song plays to come up with something and write. Ten songs, ten little fics. This one was for 'Wish You Were Here' by Pink Floyd.

Harry had gone to another Ministry fundraiser, this one for Scrimgeour’s re-election campaign and Hogwarts scholarships for those orphaned by the war. The second one was more heavily publicised, and the reason Harry could swallow his own attendance; the first was the real reason and they both knew it. Draco hadn’t been able to make himself go: he hated the way they all stared. He and Harry were living in a fish bowl, he knew that, but the politicians and journalists looked like they were deciding whether the goldfish were pretty enough to keep watching or if it was time to get the boiling water and a plate.

Draco swallowed and wished Harry was here.

Eventually he got home, and crawled into bed next to him. Draco felt him, and reached for him sleepily. Harry held on.

An hour later, he woke crying from a dream about Dumbledore – his ghost, shaking his head sadly at Harry in the new golden lobby at the Ministry.

“Am I still Dumbledore’s man?” he choked.

Draco stroked his hair, and knew that Harry had only wanted to make things better, to find solace in change instead of pointless, fruitless cuddles. They had to survive, and he needed Harry to do that.

So he lied. “They could never change that.”


	8. Shared Gaze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for the challenge "intimate", and it's exceedingly melodramatic, but in my defence when I wrote it I was 18.

They never smile.

Draco and Harry haven’t spoken since their last night, but they’ve come to a tacit agreement nonetheless. They don’t smile at each other. It’s silly, really; does nothing to disguise their feelings when they spend this public banquet drowning in each other’s eyes.

Weasley – he’ll never think of her as Mrs Potter – touches Harry’s shoulder and leans down, whispers to him. Draco’s mouth twists at the implied intimacy, and it takes new self-control to stop him yelling at her to take her hand off.

She does. The wedding ring on it glimmers, and Draco abruptly feels sick.

~*~

He’s grown his hair longer since Harry last saw him; Ginny thinks he looks like Lucius. If she watched Draco as he does – scrutinising each inch of pale skin, learning each new wrinkle – she wouldn’t speak such blasphemy.

Draco could never be anyone but himself; the bright centre of Harry’s universe. He shines in company. Sometimes Harry hates that Draco can sense Harry’s presence; he always quietens to return the intimate gaze.

Meeting his eyes is like staring into the sun. Bright and intense, it threatens to bring tears to Harry’s eyes. Draco is far away, and shining, and untouchable.

 

Harry jumps when Ginny whispers to him. For a moment he’s filled with resentment that she's interrupted the shared gaze that's the only thing he and Draco now share.

Ginny talks, and he watches Draco. Draco’s hair falls forward, revealing the shadowed nape of his neck. The sight of that intimate, vulnerable skin exposed is a visceral reminder of his loss.

It’s time to leave. Harry drags his gaze away, and keeps it on Ginny’s moon-pale shoulders as he follows her into the dim hall. He looks back for an instant, and glimpses that bright light in Draco’s eyes fading.


	9. Easy/Lucky/Free

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is an awesome, if difficult meme I picked up somewhere – not sure where! You put your iPod/Media Player/whatever on shuffle, and pick a pairing. You write a ficlet (or whatever) based on the song that comes up, and you only have as long as the song plays to come up with something and write. Ten songs, ten little fics. This one's for 'Easy/Lucky/Free' by Bright Eyes.
> 
> **Warning for depression and implied suicide ideation.**

Harry had looked frightened when he died. Draco could remember the way his face had twisted beneath the soil and blood as he faced Voldemort, before the spell had taken them both together. Tied together to the end; their bond had mattered more than Harry’s bond with Draco.

He’d breathed out, an asthmatic little wheeze, and by the time Draco reached the body – shoving past anyone who tried to stop him, keening like a dying animal – Harry had looked calm, somehow. Maybe just by contrast with Draco’s wailing anguish.

He’d been told off by Aunt Andromeda for that screaming; Gothic, Black, melodramatic pain was not de rigeur any more. Only stately tears, and then calm. They didn’t have the right to mourn for heroes – Draco didn’t, anyway.

He found calm in the end. He’d been numb since the funerals: he hadn’t cried for them, then.

It was ten years since Harry had died. Draco had lived on, was part of society. He didn’t see his old Slytherin friends any more. He was buying produce and helping stimulate the post-war economy; he wasn’t protesting the new laws like Hermione Weasley; he had a son. He was getting along.

He still dreamed of Harry every night.

Harry had been such a survivor, but he’d died then. Died a hero. If Draco had died that night, he would have been a tragic figure, the son who abandoned his father for love and was cut down on the battlefield. Instead he kept living, feeling the beat of his heart as an insufferable weight. Every minute, every day, he thought of Harry. There was no pain now, though. Simply envy.

One day, it would be okay. Draco would join him, and Blaise and Pansy and Greg would join them, and it would be sweet relief.


	10. A Better Fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco had never said he’d change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for Round Four of the Harry/Draco Last Drabble Writer Standing, and the prompt was “enough with this”. The title is from e e cummings: “Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.”

This was the third time they’d woken up together, and it still made a thrill sing through Harry like a chord hanging in the air. “Morning.”

“Morning,” Draco responded with a slow stretch. “God, I feel a Muggleborn Healer’s been at me.”

Harry blinked. “Pardon?”

Draco glanced at him through eyes still glazed with sleep. “What? Don’t get all righteous on me, I can’t be doing with it at this hour.”

So it wasn’t a mistake or misinterpretation. Harry glared; anger snapped back into place, so simple and so _right_ when he was looking at this cold-eyed creature. “I can’t believe you’d say that. I thought you’d changed.”

“I never pretended,” Draco snarled, his upper lip peeling back to reveal his teeth. “You just forgot – the sex was good so you forgot what I really am!” He was off the bed and dressing in an instant.

“Enough,” Harry half-spluttered, the word mangled as he forced it from his throat. “Enough.”

Draco paused, staring. He was posed to leave, still with only one shoe on, frozen in the early-morning light streaming through the open door.

Harry came forward and dragged him from the rays of light, pulling him backwards towards the shadowed bed. They collapsed together into the sheets and Harry kissed him, long and soft and deep, until Draco stopped trying to speak.

Harry knew they were doomed, but what did it matter? He’d enjoy the light at the end of the tunnel until he was squashed by the train.


	11. The Opposite of Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after the-passionate-hatesex-becomes-love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for hd100’s challenge, hate.

The first time, they mauled each other with their mouths. A week later was their first ‘date’; they snarled, and slammed together again.

Seven years later, they live together. Every morning they wake, share a perfunctory kiss, then spend the day living their separate lives.

They don’t fight any more. They don’t make love either.

Draco doesn’t know what Harry’s doing at work, or if he’s happy. They nod politely in the corridor and sleep side-by-side, without touching.

Draco knows that if nothing else, his relationship with Harry has taught him something.

The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference.


	12. Distant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who could Malfoy possibly hate more than Harry?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't quite angst, but it seemed the best fit, especially since this is sixth year and we know what's coming out of Draco's new obsession. It was written for the hd100 prompt, "intimate".

There’s an intimacy to hatred.

Just last year, he’d sit at dinner and feel grey eyes trace each hated line of his face; Harry would glare back into a face he knew as well as his own. They would stare into each other, seeing nothing else.

Now Malfoy sits there pale-faced, staring down at his left hand as it fiddles with a knife. He doesn’t glare at Harry any more, or come up with badly-planned schemes. His distraction is tangible.

Harry will find out what he’s doing. Who’s he plotting against now? Who could Malfoy possibly hate more than Harry?


	13. Trapped

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco is punished for his hate speech. Warning for switching POVs between Harry and Draco, between drabbles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for the "silence" prompt at hd100. It was also written in 2010; reposting in 2018, I feel the need to note that I'm Team Hermione in this one, all the way, and also that RL hate speech laws are not like this at ALL.

“What about free speech?” Granger had shouted at the Minister, but Draco’s speech had been taken from him and trapped: drawn from his lungs, up his throat, taking his air with it. The light that used to be his voice was put inside an unbreakable jar and hidden in the depths of the department of mysteries.

They said he was dangerous, he was a risk to the state, he’d committed hate speech. Pansy screamed at them, a virtuoso in diatribe, and Granger yelled about rights and precedent. Draco sat chained in the Wizengamot chair, and couldn’t make himself speak.

Sentenced.

~*~

The day the sentence was carried out, Harry was there outside Draco’s holding cell. Draco looked exhausted, his eyes blurred. His hand was cold and shaking as Harry held it.

Draco was obviously trying to keep calm. They took him into the dark room, with Hermione – his lawyer – and Harry, who wasn’t meant to be there but wouldn’t leave.

When the woman came at him, Draco screamed. The horrible, hoarse noise reverberated round the room, Draco’s blinding terror making itself horribly known. Harry choked on tears: he shouldn’t be standing here, doing nothing when his lover was screaming like that.

~*~

Then the scream stopped. Draco’s mouth was still open, horribly, and the Unspeakable – her face untouched by Draco’s screaming – was drawing a little light out of it.

She screwed the top onto a jar, and the light was gone. 

Draco moved his mouth, his pale throat working. Nothing came out. The fear in his face was blind, unthinking. Animal.

It broke Harry’s heart when the shackles were removed. They didn’t consider Draco a threat any more. He was helpless.

The love inside him seared his chest. He waited desperately for Draco to look at him – to reach for him. “Sweetheart.”

~*~

We live our lives trapped in a swathe of silence. I try not to talk too much: it feels like sacrilege, working my vocal cords and tongue to communicate while he sits in white-faced, gagged shock. 

I gagged him once, when we were lovers in the first flush of peace. I have nightmares about it now: about him crying and begging through the cloth.

I love him beyond anything, though. I will never abandon him. I don’t say “I love you” now, but I cuddle him after sex when it feels right to be quiet, and I’m sure he knows.

~*~

He doesn’t tell me he loves me any more.

He barely says anything, actually; he thinks it will hurt me more. He’s right, but it just adds to the weight. I never worried about being a burden to anyone before this, but – I can’t do most magic, or tell him I love him out loud.

I’m not me any more. ‘Draco’ meant being snarky, doing impressions, insulting people, never shutting up. This ghost isn’t anyone Harry could fall in love with.

And still I stay, because I can’t bear to stop clinging. And I always will.

I hope he doesn’t know that I know.


	14. Internal Ache

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Astoria won't have Draco attempting to cheat on her.
> 
> Also, I'm putting this under "angsty H/D" because I never wrote a sequel, but it's definitely going to end in Harry breaking the curse and he and Draco falling in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for the current prompt at dracoharry100, "aching".

It had been thirteen years since Draco had had sex.

This was not out of any sort of romantic attachment to the idea of honour; or, for that matter, out of any romantic attachment to his wife. It was purely because Astoria Greengrass, being of impeccable pureblood lineage but the younger daughter of a somewhat impoverished line, had been eager to marry Draco and have his pureblood babies. Lucius and Narcissa had leapt gratefully at the chance for their son to marry a beautiful, pureblooded, _blonde_ witch who wasn’t put off by that unsightly pink scar on his left arm.

~*~

In the rush to marry him off, nobody took the time to examine Astoria’s sweet, unassuming, unintelligent exterior. Not even Narcissa, which Draco thought was something of an oversight, since she herself had been a blonde, unassuming youngest daughter, and was made of chilled steel.

It turned out that Astoria _was_ canny enough to guess Draco’s orientation. She was also callous enough to take measures to prevent a lover from persuading Draco away from her. Astoria was a typical pureblood: willing to do anything for family. It was simply unfortunate that she still considered herself a Greengrass, not a Malfoy.

~*~

Astoria insisted Draco fulfill his marital duties. Scorpius was conceived, and they began living separate lives.

The first time Draco went out to find a man, he felt guilty; the absence of the heavy family wedding ring on his left hand nagged at him. He glanced constantly at the pale flesh there, the red line where the ring had been. He’d taken vows with Astoria. 

But Draco hadn’t had enjoyable sex for three years: not since the engagement. He found someone – a handsome, freckled brunet – and went to a backroom.

Guilt, maybe. Or nervousness: it had been a long time.

~*~

The second time, Draco blamed his impotence on alcohol. The third time, he blamed it on his partner’s red hair. After that, he knew it was something else. Unwilling to admit this might be natural – what kind of twenty-five-old couldn’t get hard? – he went looking in his father’s Dark Arts library.

Chastity spells were traditionally used on women, but a medieval witch had got her own back. Using her wedding ring, she cursed her husband with impotence outside the marriage bed: a magical means of ensuring fidelity.

The sign? A red line around the victim’s finger, under their wedding ring.

~*~

He tore up to Astoria’s chambers, black rage misting his sight. He shoved the door open. Astoria had been curled in an armchair doing embroidery; she exclaimed as the door reverberated off the wall, and stood up to face him. “Draco, what on earth – ?”

“You cursed me, you vicious bitch!” he bellowed. 

She went pale and still, as if his shout had turned her into a marble statue. Then she blinked, drawing eyelids like shutters over her deep blue eyes, and shut the door with a wave of her wand. “Do try to remember you have a year-old son, Draco.”

~*~

“I do remember,” he snarled, feeling his upper lip curl to reveal his teeth. “I’ve been staying at home or at the office, always taking care of him. If I wasn’t a good father, a good husband, I’d never have found out!”

She raised a cool eyebrow, and her voice barely shook as she spoke. Somewhere behind the towering rage, Draco was impressed by her composure in being caught. “Clearly you’re not a perfect husband, or you wouldn’t have discovered the curse. I’m impressed it took so long: you have more self-control than I thought, despite this little tantrum.”

_“Tantrum!”_

~*~

“Tantrum,” she repeated. “That is what we call it when children sqawl against things they cannot change. I performed that curse so that you would find no man who might tempt you to divorce me; if you did so, my family and I would be damaged financially and I might lose custody of Scorpius. You can go to the Aurors to have it removed, but then it will inevitably become public knowledge that you’re an impotent queer. You wouldn’t do that to yourself, let alone Scorpius. And you won’t explain to your parents that you tried to fuck Muggle men.”

~*~

She was right; in all of it. There was no one Draco could tell – or rather, no one he would tell; and only Astoria could end the curse. So he stood there, fists clenched, and agreed through numb lips.

This woman he’d so underestimated smiled. “I’ll lift the curse when Scorpius goes to Hogwarts,” she said. 

“Ten years...” Draco whispered.

“By then I’ll have built up the family’s investments enough that we’ll survive even if you divorce me.”

“If! _If_! I can’t wait to get shot of you, you mad harpy!”

Astoria’s smile was sweet. “The feeling is mutual, darling.”

~*~

After that, Draco hid in his room, or posed haughtily downstairs, and was never alone with her. He couldn’t bear it, her eyes on him seeming to scrape at his skin. She knew that he couldn’t... couldn’t do what made him a man.

That wasn’t true, he knew that; but it was hard to believe it. He’d always worried that somehow being gay made him less of a man; wasn’t it ‘manly’ to pant after witches? And now he couldn’t even get hard. If people knew...

He wanted to curl around this constant, internal aching and not have to move.


	15. Enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco hopes that Potter not hating him will be enough, if he can’t stop hating himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for a Harry/Draco Last Drabble Writer Standing. The prompt was "I hate that I want you", 100 - 300 words.

Harry’s fingers were calloused, a line of lumps under the knuckle where he carried boxes of paperwork about daily. He never remembered to float them. It was an unmistakable mark of his Muggle upbringing.

More obvious still were the tiny white marks on his knees, where he’d been shoved onto gravel a thousand times: purebloods grew up without scars. Harry was sprawled on his back now, his mouth scarlet and his eyes heavy-lidded like a sated lion’s, his knees drawn up. Pulling out, still panting, Draco sat running his fingertips over them curiously. Such a peculiar thing, that long-forgotten childhood injury could leave marks this way.

His heart sped up and his thighs parted, welcoming Harry between them. Harry lay comfortably on top of him and they kissed slowly, passing breath from lip to lip.

Sweat slicked their bodies as they fucked: Draco arching to meet every thrust as Harry moved inside him, Harry’s hands holding his wrists down like he might try to flee at any moment.

Silly Potter: didn’t he know Draco would have run from this already if he could?

Draco couldn’t meet his eyes. So he found himself staring at the famous scar, visible behind Harry’s sweat-soaked fringe. Thin and unnoticeable and the epitome of everything that said this was wrong.

Draco turned his head. Harry’s hand was wrapped round his wrist just above the knot of dead tissue that marked his alliances.

He’d hated the Dark Lord so, but swearing obedience to him had left a lasting scar. After this was over – his neck arched as Potter’s cock hit his prostate, as Harry’s mouth heated a nipple – all signs would be gone.

Draco came screaming as the blood rushed in his ears; Harry grunted and bit and followed. They lay entwined while Harry softened inside him and mouthed Draco’s shoulder. Draco felt his teeth, felt the warmth rushing under his skin as Harry sucked. There would be love bites on his right shoulder tomorrow.

Draco shut his eyes and hoped it would be enough.


	16. What I'll Accept

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry comes to Astoria, and asks permission: just one night with Draco. 
> 
> Melodrama ahoy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for Sorting Hat Drabbles, for the pairing Harry & Astoria and the prompt "just for tonight".

“Harry Potter is being here to see you, Mistress.” The house-elf popped away.

Astoria felt herself flinch, body and soul. Then she stood and met the weary green eyes that haunted her husband. “Mr Potter.”

“Mrs Malfoy, Draco is at my home.” Harry Potter paused, his eyes searching her face. He must be trying to work out if she’d guessed. She felt her mouth shrink into a sour little pinch of anger. “I came - I want - one time to get it out of our systems - “

“No!” Bright fury filled Astoria. How dare this sullen, scruffy wizard break Draco’s heart?

“But - please. Just for tonight. I know I - I can’t believe I’m asking this, but it’s one night. I’d never try again.”

Astoria held back the urge to slap him with all the breeding in her blood. “I refuse. If Draco does this, he does it without my consent.”

Something dimmed in Harry Potter’s face. “He... he won’t, then. Marriage is sacred to him, he won’t do this if you don’t let him - “

“Let him? Let _you_. You’re the one who wants him to fuck you and then leave quietly, without any messy consequences.” Her voice was shrill with the effort of not shouting. “You’re the one who wants to ease the tension, to _get it out of your system_. Draco _loves_ you! It’s not a crush, it’s not infatuation, he is in love with you, and by God if I have to accept it then so do you!”

Harry Potter blinked helplessly, nothing like worthy of Draco.

“Draco is not only my husband, my life’s companion. He is the father of my child. My partner in the most important thing I will ever do. Being his wife is a joy, this night if not forever, because I have the right to tell you no. I can stand in the way of you destroying him with a one-night stand.”

“You don’t have the right to decide for him!” His face was reddening. “If he wants me - “

“Love is not going to wreck him again! You might not mean to but your carelessness with this will destroy him - ”

“I’m not the one standing in the way of love - ”

She went for her wand. Harry Potter was faster.

They stared at each other over their raised weapons.

“How do you know I don’t love him?” he said, quiet. “You don’t know me.”

“He’s loved you for years,” she said, inexpressibly weary. “If you loved him too, you would have seen it long before.”


	17. Wish You Were Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They had to survive, and he needed Harry to do that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for a meme. You put your phone/iPod/whatever on shuffle, and pick a pairing. You write a ficlet (or whatever) based on the song that comes up, and you only have as long as the song plays to come up with something and write. Ten songs, ten little fics.
> 
> This one, obviously, was for [Wish You Were Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXdNnw99-Ic).

Harry had gone to another Ministry fundraiser, this one for Scrimgeour’s re-election campaign and Hogwarts scholarships for those orphaned by the war. The second one was more heavily publicised, and the reason Harry could swallow his own attendance; the first was the real reason and they both knew it. Draco hadn’t been able to make himself go: he hated the way they all stared. He and Harry were living in a fish bowl, he knew that, but the politicians and journalists looked like they were deciding whether the goldfish were pretty enough to keep watching or if it was time to get the boiling water and a plate.

Draco swallowed and wished Harry was here.

Eventually he got home, and crawled into bed next to him. Draco felt him, and reached for him sleepily. Harry held on.

An hour later, he woke crying from a dream about Dumbledore – his ghost, shaking his head sadly at Harry in the new golden lobby at the Ministry.

“Am I still Dumbledore’s man?” he choked.

Draco stroked his hair, and knew that Harry had only wanted to make things better, to find solace in change instead of pointless, fruitless cuddles. They had to survive, and he needed Harry to do that.

So he lied. “They could never change that.”


	18. You Give Love A Bad Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Harry was in love, and it wasn’t going well."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for a meme. You put your phone/iPod/whatever on shuffle, and pick a pairing. You write a ficlet (or whatever) based on the song that comes up, and you only have as long as the song plays to come up with something and write. Ten songs, ten little fics.
> 
> This one, obviously, was for [You Give Love A Bad Name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9tKwSboJeg).

Love saved the world. Love was what he’d always been searching for. Love was all he needed.

Harry was in love, and it wasn’t going well.

Draco smirked at him, then turned away and stalked off through the club. He was dressed up tonight, a corset and heels making his walk even sexier than usual, red varnish bloodying his nails appropriately. He always tore at the skin of Harry’s back when they fucked.

Little bastard.

Harry did as was expected, playing the suitor for Draco’s favours. It was the only way he’d ever get them: Draco hated it when Harry tried for his own power.

Harry stared, mesmerised, and waited for Draco to come, and bestow a kiss. Maybe a fuck, before he left again and found someone else.

Bastard.


	19. The Alamo Is No Place For Dancing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry writes Draco a letter, afterwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for a meme. You put your phone/iPod/whatever on shuffle, and pick a pairing. You write a ficlet (or whatever) based on the song that comes up, and you only have as long as the song plays to come up with something and write. Ten songs, ten little fics.
> 
> This one, obviously, was for [The Alamo Is No Place For Dancing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O_npT8UET4).

“Dear Draco – um. I don’t know how this works, really. There’s probably some sort of etiquette to writing a letter with a Quick Quotes Quill – that’s not quite what it is, by the way, it’s a prototype of George’s so it’ll write what I actually say, but it doesn’t have a name yet – anyway, there’s probably some etiquette with the ‘dear’s and the ‘love Harry’s. But I don’t love you now. And maybe you don’t want etiquette. You’re only out there in Texas to rebel, aren’t you?

I liked Texas. It was so hot. Kind of smothering sometimes, but maybe that was you. Oh – that sounded meaner than I meant it. You know what I mean though. It’s true. Lying around in a bed getting sticky in Texas summers is very hot. You used to lick the sweat off my chest...

I didn’t mean this to get pornographic, so don’t get excited, Draco. This letter is just to warn you. I’m telling my friends what you did. Warning them. I thought you were there to escape, but it was so you could be safe while you planned vengeance. I have to tell them, you – this was about me. Huh.

Don’t worry, don’t panic – don’t run. You didn’t commit any crimes, after all. You just – you just – you just seduced me, yeah I can say it, so you could crush my heart because I testified against your bloody father and you wanted to punish me. But I saw your eyes when he got Kissed and...

Anyway.”


	20. Easy/Lucky/Free

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Harry had looked frightened when he died."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for a meme. You put your phone/iPod/whatever on shuffle, and pick a pairing. You write a ficlet (or whatever) based on the song that comes up, and you only have as long as the song plays to come up with something and write. Ten songs, ten little fics.
> 
> This one, obviously, was for [Easy/Lucky/Free](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RozuwUlX7MI).

Harry had looked frightened when he died. Draco could remember the way his face had twisted beneath the soil and blood as he faced Voldemort, before the spell had taken them both together. Tied together to the end; their bond had mattered more than Harry’s bond with Draco.

He’d breathed out, an asthmatic little wheeze, and by the time Draco reached the body – shoving past anyone who tried to stop him, keening like a dying animal – Harry had looked calm, somehow. Maybe just by contrast with Draco’s wailing anguish.

He’d been told off by Aunt Andromeda for that screaming; Gothic, Black, melodramatic pain was not _de rigeur_ any more. Only stately tears, and then calm. They didn’t have the right to mourn for heroes – Draco didn’t, anyway.

He found calm in the end. He’d been numb since the funerals: he hadn’t cried for them, then.

It was ten years since Harry had died. Draco had lived on, was part of society. He didn’t see his old Slytherin friends any more. He was buying produce and helping stimulate the post-war economy; he wasn’t protesting the new laws like Hermione Weasley; he had a son. He was getting along.

He still dreamed of Harry every night.

Harry had been such a survivor, but he’d died then. Died a hero. If Draco had died that night, he would have been a tragic figure, the son who abandoned his father for love and was cut down on the battlefield. Instead he kept living, feeling the beat of his heart as an insufferable weight. Every minute, every day, he thought of Harry. There was no pain now, though. Simply envy.

One day, it would be okay. Draco would join him, and Blaise and Pansy and Greg would join them, and it would be sweet relief.


	21. Aurum Potentas Est

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry's power is nothing like Draco's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this for a Harry/Draco Worldcup prompt as commentporn. The prompt was "coins - material possessions, fulfillment, strength".

His eyes stay on the coins on his bedside table while Harry fucks him in his plush bed, hand splayed against the mahogany headboard. Harry's palm leaves sweat on the Latin motto beneath the Malfoy crest: _aurum potentas est._

The coins were slipped into his hand by a slimy, desperate man, standing in ill-fitting robes and asking Draco to champion his wife. Couldn't Draco understand - she lost her temper, the Muggles were everywhere, hasn't he ever hexed someone from spite and then regretted it? Couldn't he understand?

Of course he could. Draco arches up as Harry's cock hits his prostate, and thinks that Harry never could.

Harry's hand slides from the headboard, and both large hands come down on Draco's blue-veined wrists like the hand of God. Harry's thrusting harder now and Draco's suddenly brought back to awareness of what's happening, swallowed suddenly by a wave of hot breath and male sweat and Harry moving with him, hard and strong and handsome. Harry's eyes are shut, his face a rictus - he brings it down to Draco's neck and bites, and Draco's body bows as he yells.

He's still coming, and Harry's thrusting hard as ever even as the rhythm grows erratic. Draco lies limp when he's finished, and Harry's green eyes are intent on him. Draco knows what he wants, what he's seeing: Draco limp and helpless, held down beneath Harry's bulk. And he is helpless, for now - defenceless against Harry's vitality and faith, his way of changing the world.

Draco lives in the world, though, and he has his own kind of power. He clenches, and Harry can no longer hold out.

Harry collapses on Draco's chest. Draco looks at the coins again while Harry pants hotly against his neck, and remembers the other coins. The ones that slid into the hand of a very bad wizard Harry's been searching for for months; a wizard whose Knockturn Alley shop had called itself Pest Removal. The coins that had promised Draco exactly what he wanted. What he deserved: the best, his to own and keep.

The coins that were the same gold as the wedding ring Harry would no doubt remove when he got the news.

Draco smiled, and thought he'd turned out a proper Malfoy after all.

Gold is power.


	22. So Much For Being A Gryffindor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1/3 of an unfinished series. Harry's going to ask Draco out any minute now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for hd100's prompt, "tomorrow".

_All right. You can do this._

Harry's heart thumped as he walked through the Ministry’s foyer, oblivious to the rubber-necking wizards around him. Since he was an Auror, they likely assumed his expression was due to needing to save the world, not his inability to ask out Draco Malfoy.

Draco was the Ministry receptionist; being both very attractive and very sarcastic, he was a natural at it. Harry slowed as he approached the desk, feeling his hands go clammy.

“Yes, Potter?”

Harry swallowed. _Now. Here’s your chance –_

“Er... nothing. Sorry.”

Once again, Harry promised himself he’d ask Draco out tomorrow.


	23. So Much For Resolution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2/3 of an unfinished series. Harry’s New Year’s resolution was to ask out Draco Malfoy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for dracoharry100's challenge, "resolution".

Harry’s New Year’s resolution was to ask out Draco Malfoy.

He’d even written it down. Hermione, typically, had organised a little party game for the early arrivers at her New Year’s Eve bash: everyone wrote down their resolution, then the slips of paper were mixed up, read out and everyone guessed who’d written down which.

No one had had much trouble guessing who’d written _ask out Malfoy, buy him expensive wine and then have lots of sex_. Harry now tried to ask Malfoy out every morning, failed, and went to a friend’s office to whine about it.

He needed alcohol.

~*~

He went into Hermione’s kitchen and poured himself some champagne. As he sipped the bubbly, noise erupted from the next room before dropping to a dull roar: new arrivals.

He didn’t move. Hermione undoubtedly would’ve invited lots of people, some of whom he wouldn’t know. Hermione’s friends were usually too polite to actually ask for an autograph; instead, they’d stare for a few seconds then scurry away in embarrassment.

Her work friends wouldn’t, though: most Unspeakables were Slytherins.

He could ask them about Draco! How he was, if he was seeing someone, if the someone could be disposed of easily...

~*~

Harry turned for the door, and stopped short. Draco was standing in the doorway. The sight of the tall, slim man with his snowy hair and skin seemed to hit Harry low in the stomach, and for a moment all he could do was stare.

“What?” Draco said, shoulders hunching under his gaze.

“Nothing,” Harry said quickly. “Nothing at all.”

“Okay...” Draco’s grey eyes were clouded with uncertainty. He looked down, then bent over. Harry was about to accuse Draco of deliberate cruelty when he stood up again, holding one of the slips of paper with resolutions on from earlier.

~*~

Draco stared down at the paper. He looked adorable with that confused expression, and Harry felt a smile crease his face as he watched Draco frown in consternation. Then Draco looked up, directly into Harry’s eyes. Harry stopped smiling, hoping he hadn’t noticed.

Draco read, “‘ask out Malfoy, buy him expensive wine and then have lots of sex’. Who wrote this?”

_Oh. Shit._

“I – er – ”

“You obviously know,” Draco said, exasperated. “Please just tell me.”

“I wrote it.”

The deep, seductive voice rang out in the kitchen. Draco started to smile.

He hugged Blaise back, and Harry considered murder.


	24. Possessive Bastard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3/3 of an unfinished series. Harry is intensely jealous of Blaise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for hd100's prompt, "party".

“You wrote it? Really?” Laughter was bubbling through Draco’s voice, but not the mocking laughter Harry had always imagined when picturing _himself_ telling Draco such a thing. No: Draco’s pale face was bright with his delighted smile.

“I certainly did. You know I believe in knowing exactly what I want.” Blaise was smiling back. He was only a little taller than Draco, and standing close enough that his handsome face was inches from Draco’s.

Harry kind of wanted to hit him.

Then Blaise kissed Draco, and Harry revised that into wanting to curse him into a thousand tiny, bloody pieces.

~*~

The party went downhill from there.

Harry made himself leave, edging awkwardly around them. “Excuse me, Malfoy, I...” He felt Draco’s eyes track him for a moment, but he didn’t look round. No doubt Draco had forgotten he was there, or maybe looked scornful, and Harry didn’t want to see that in his face.

Besides, next moment Blaise’s smooth voice was asking Draco how he’d been. Harry scowled, and stamped his way down the hall. He heard the beginning of a typically Draco reply – sarcastic tone and slightly superior giggling – before he slammed his way back into the living room.

~*~

He went up to Hermione, who was standing by the buffet and looked resplendent in her crimson dress. “Have you asked him out yet?” she asked.

Harry poured and drained a glass of wine.

“I’ll take that as a no. What happened?”

Just then, Slytherin voices rose, laughing. Blaise and Draco had just entered, and Blaise already had his arm possessively around Draco’s shoulders. Pansy Parkinson was calling, “you’ll get your Galleons in the morning, bitch,” and Blaise was looking smug. Harry hoped for outrage, but Draco simply drawled, “isn’t that usually his line?”

Hermione blinked at the sight.

“...Oh.”

~*~

Blaise led Draco over to where people were dancing to Hermione’s generic rock, and they slipped easily into a rhythm. Draco’s smooth movements were mesmerising. He and Blaise, both slick in tight black trousers, looked horribly well-matched.

Blaise’s hands smoothed down to Draco’s hips, controlling the movement and rounding it out; Draco laughed, his head thrown back and teeth flashing, and let him. Blaise looked up, straight into Harry’s eyes, as one hand reached to squeeze Draco’s round arse. Harry felt his jaw clench as Draco pushed lazily into the movement, so amused, and Blaise grinned nastily.

_Damnit._

He knew.


End file.
